Taiwan is a tropical country. And as in most tropical places, cockroaches are bad news. But are they worth freaking out about and calling the police?

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SET News reports how Taiwanese cops must deal with things like geckos, but answering a call about a roach is a bit ridiculous. The news channel reports, as does QQ News (via ChinaSmack) and Yahoo! News Taiwan, that a twenty year-old college student surnamed Wang studying at National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology called the police on his phone, saying, "Hurry, please save me." The police arrived on the scene, and found the perp: a roach.

Apparently, the student had opened a window, when a roach broke into her room and started flying about (yes, roaches in Taiwan can fly).

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The police captured the cockroach, which was crawling on her desk, later naming it "Xiao Qiang" (a reference to a Stephen Chow movie in which he keeps a roach pet), and then released the insect alive (well, they threw it out the window). No word if the cockroach is alive, dead or still causing campus terror.

You can see police footage of the event in the SET News clip. The first responding officer said this was the first time he'd ever been called to handle a roach. He added that in the name of serving and protecting the public, the police helped her locate and remove the critter.

"This is ridiculous," said a glasses-wearing female college student in the SET News clip. "I would probably call my roommate or someone or try to deal with this myself." Elsewhere online, people seemed to think this was a waste of police resources.

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Times sure change, huh? When I was in college, the police were called over a totally different type of roach.